THIBAUD PAVLOVIC-HOBBA violin
WILMA SMITH violin
HELEN IRELAND viola
ZOE KNIGHTON cello

AGATHA YIM, POLYPHONIC PICTURES filming and editing
THOMAS GRUBB, MANO MUSICA sound engineering, editing and mastering

Filmed November 2022 at Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank

This project was made possible through support from the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, Australia Council and the Besen Family Foundation.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  1770-1827
String Quartet Op. 133 (composed 1825)

What is it about Beethoven and this piece in particular that places him on a pedestal of string quartet composition? He defied public opinion, refused to listen to players when they claimed his music was unplayable, and from most accounts, was an extremely difficult person to deal with. 

Glenn Gould called this piece the most astonishing piece in musical literature. We say ‘piece’, but of course really, it was intended to be the final movement of Beethoven’s Op. 130 string quartet. Critics and audiences found it incomprehensible and, eventually, Beethoven wrote a new fourth movement and the Grosse Fugue took on a whole new life of its own.

This fugue is one of the most perfectly constructed works in the canon: it is the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House of string quartets. In this monolith of human creation, there are six sections:

Overtura - Fuga - Meno Mosso - Scherzo - Fuga - Coda

When Beethoven was sketching the first movement of the A minor quartet Op. 132, he paused to wonder how the cantus-firmus theme would look as the subject of a fugue. Albrechtsberger, Beethoven’s old teacher, had written a treatise on fugues listing a large number of fugal rules or tricks, including some of his own invention, with a cautionary note that seldom can all of them be fitted into a single composition. Beethoven took this as a challenge and according to some theorists, he resolved to write a fugue with all known compositional devices.

The Overtura sets the scene by delivering all the material that will be developed into the fugue. Beethoven then pairs two of the themes together to ease the listener in. From time to time, you will hear the quartet join metaphorical hands in a transition section before breaking out to play themes in every way imaginable. Then, using his most delicious key of G flat major, Beethoven allows the listener to bathe in glorious other-worldly sensory overload, before taking a scherzando (yes, the Grosse Fugue is indeed playful!) view of the original theme. The second intense fugue is designed to whip the audience into a frenzy (remember, this is the last movement of an already epic piece and in its original format, the audience would have been listening for over 50 minutes) and just in case we had forgotten the themes, Beethoven lets us hear them again in their own right before the end.

Stravinsky summed up this work best when he said, “This absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever…”